
Empress Dowager Cixi
The Concubine Who Launched Modern China
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Narrated by:
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Pik-sen Lim
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By:
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Jung Chang
At the age of 16, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. When he died, in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China - behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male.
In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Cixi fought against monumental obstacles to change China. Under her the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state: industries, railways, electricity, the telegraph, and an army and navy with up-to-date weaponry. It was she who abolished gruesome punishments like “death by a thousand cuts” and put an end to foot-binding. She inaugurated women’s liberation and embarked on the path to introduce parliamentary elections to China. Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot.
Based on newly available, mostly Chinese, historical documents such as court records, official and private correspondence, diaries, and eyewitness accounts, this biography will revolutionize historical thinking about a crucial period in China’s - and the world’s - history. Packed with drama, fast paced, and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman: as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the world’s population, and as a unique stateswoman.
©2014 Jung Chang (P)2014 Bolinda Publishing Pty LtdListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
Unputdownable; liked narrator
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Feel so fortunate to know about her
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Interesting story about a controversial woman
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A thought provoking biography of one the people who responsible for the transition to modern China.
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The text inevitably consists of a lot of dates and lists of names etc.
Some interesting and enlightening perspectives on events such as the Boxer Rebellion. Part of Chang's aim was to rehabilitate the image of CiXi, which this succeeds in some respects.
I thought it was strange to choose a narrator who is obviously not a native mandarin speaker and who has problems with pronouncing names, places and events using the pinyin. This became confusing at times.
rather hard work
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Even the most gentle and forgiving tone in which the story is related can’t cover up the fact that one is dealing and irascible, pompous and impetuous personality. Happy to usurp murder and steal on a whim. That are not fatal flaws in a despot but it does make the narrative unconvincing
I imagine there are other more informative assessments of her reign available,
A Long Panegyric for a Tryant
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